The Cruise Group, a new outsourced accounting service in Pacific Beach, aims to help small businesses by being their controller, while helping them stay organized.

Entrepreneurs Jodi Barthold and Shawna Cruise have teamed to create a new boutique accounting firm.

“We thought it was really fun,” said Bartold of their new company name adding, “You can do a lot of things to play off it. We came up with 'cruise your biz, cruise your cause, etc.' “

“We really are about accounting, first and foremost,” said Barthold of Cruise Group's purpose. “We're really into helping business owners get smooth sailing for running their business.”

Barthold pointed out she and Cruise “Are not bookeepers who come in and pay your bills after collecting your receipts. The thrust of our business is really more to help business owners run a great business, reach their goals, put a good system in controlling accounts that is safe, systematic and proper.”

Barthold added, “We're trying to go online if possible, but the nature of accounting does require some face-to-face.”

Which is why Cruise Group has a one-person, brick-and-mortar space at 1135 Garnet Ave.

Barthold said she and Cruise have been acquainted for about eight years. “We became friends and then I did some consulting for her prior business,” Barthold said. “I decided to invite her into this business. She's absolutely brilliant … and I wanted someone who had that business owner's perspective.”

Barthold talked about Cruise Group's business strategy, noting clients are not charged by the hour, but rather by “the volume of what is needed.”

“It could be project-based, such as putting together a loan package for applying for a Small Business Association (SBA) loan,” she said adding, “Most people hire us for ongoing work month-to-month.”

The Cruise Group, said Barthold, “has a nice network of people that we work with by word of mouth.” She noted she and Cruise have an Internet domain name but “do not have a website yet. We do have LinkedIn and Facebook pages.”

Barthold noted she is “not a tax person,” while adding, “I may add taxes in the future. The bulk of the firm's work, she said, is “outsourced accounting.”

That outsourcing, Barthold noted, entails things like counseling clients on “How to read their financial statements, how to put together a package for an SBA loan, determining what's the best structure for their company or how to avoid getting ripped off by employees, how to make sure that never happens again.”

Barthold talked about what the most important thing is that Cruise Group does for its clients.

“What we're all about is efficiency, making sure that we're not doing the old-school way of dealing with a shoebox full of receipts,” she said noting, “The (accounting) industry is changing. We want to make sure business owners are not running their accounting from a shoebox full of receipts. There are many systems available now for accounting, Quickbooks as one example, one tool that is very time-efficient for business owners. And that's our area of expertise.”